Reviews – The Blemishhttps://theblemish.com
Better than a slap to the faceSat, 10 Dec 2016 00:47:12 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.71067708‘Goat:’ Baaaaaad Boyshttps://theblemish.com/2016/09/goat-baaaaaad-boys/
https://theblemish.com/2016/09/goat-baaaaaad-boys/#commentsFri, 23 Sep 2016 03:30:32 +0000http://theblemish.com/?p=212940This review contains spoilers News flash: Boys are stupid. Breaking story: When white men believe they exist in a vacuum, they destroy themselves and ruin everything. Andrew Neel’s Goat, which is based on Brad Land’s memoir, follows Brad (Ben Schnetzer) on the way home from a party one night where he gets brutally beaten by […]]]>

This review contains spoilers

News flash: Boys are stupid. Breaking story: When white men believe they exist in a vacuum, they destroy themselves and ruin everything. Andrew Neel’s Goat, which is based on Brad Land’s memoir, follows Brad (Ben Schnetzer) on the way home from a party one night where he gets brutally beaten by a couple of hoodlums. He spends the summer recuperating and trying to decide whether or not he’ll start college on time at the fictional Brookman University. His brother Brett (Nick Jonas) is already a student and a brother in the Phi Sigma Mu fraternity at the school. Brad decides to go and pledge this perfect archetype of a frat, ostensibly because he feels he has to prove he’s still a man after experiencing a traumatic attack, and the hazing that ensues is truly disturbing.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Brad and Brett’s parents practically asked for this trouble when they named their sons. So were the parents of some of the other members of Phi Sigma Mu, Chance, Wes, and Dixon. As cliche as the testosterone-fueled frat boy hazing drama is, Goat’s depiction of the muck is definitely evocative. It dares you to look away. It’s visceral, primitive and uncomfortable in all the ways frat hazing is. It’s effective in the almost physical reaction it provokes. Watching it, you smell the vomit, you taste the stale beer, you are keenly aware of what testosterone can do to a human being. Goat gives you hell (week). But to what end?

It’s only in the last 10 minutes of the movie, only after one of the pledges dies that Brett finally decides this game of torture and degradation isn’t worth it. The other boys in the frat never get that woke. They remain concerned and reflective about the pledge’s tragic death only in so far as far as how it will affect their own personal futures. They’re torn up about expulsion and about job prospects but not about their potential contribution to the stress that led their peer to drop dead. And they never see the light, ever, at any point in the movie.

It’s hard to weather this gross and demeaning activity for so much of the movie without its perpetrators ever getting it. These frat boys are the men who believe they exist in a vacuum, the men whose whiteness and privilege blind them to every other conflict in the world. These are the types of boys who grow up to shoot innocent black people, to make laws governing the bodies and livelihoods of women, to use the power they were born with to never give a fuck about anyone else and never take responsibility for the obvious destruction they leave in their wake. And Goat seems, possibly, quietly, to sympathize with them. Its message is inconsistent; it’s unclear what Neel actually wants to say about hazing, about masculinity. Goat teeters on the “Being a white man is hard” line, and that left a bad feeling in my body.

I found myself thinking three things over the course of the film. These are simple, real-life ways all the internal and external torture these boys endure could have been handled or avoided:

Brad really experiences actual PTSD from his attack. It’s understandable, it’s sad, and he should have been treated by a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist would have been able to treat his symptoms and to say to him that he didn’t have to join Phi Sigma Nu to be prove his masculinity.

Parents exist. We see Brad and Brett’s for a literal second. Parents should have stepped in long before their sons became convinced they needed to roll around in mud in the middle of the woods after chugging a keg of beer to be a respectable member of society.

Every woman depicted in the movie is an object (stripper), opportunity (to get laid), or obligation (nagging wife). The graduated bro, played by James Franco, exclaims with pained exhaustion that he has a wife and a kid before shotgunning a beer, making Brad punch him in the stomach, and passing out. If just one woman could have gotten through to them, they’d have some perspective.

Goat shows that when white men believe they exist in a vacuum, they destroy themselves and others. If these boys were forced to acknowledge that they’re not alone, to talk to and listen to literally anyone else from any other demographic, they would have been able to lift their heads out of that testosterone-laden quicksand.

But the characters, save for Brett and Brad at the very end, don’t learn. Anything. They don’t ever see anyone else. If Neel was trying to say something about the state of masculinity, about the fragility of the male psyche, he missed the mark. Yes, acknowledge the poison that is frat hazing, give us its devastating effects, but then teach these boys how to dig themselves out, how to widen their views and put their experiences into perspective. The way to do that is to show them their internalized notions of masculinity are positively medieval. The way to do that is to make these frat bros experience the stories of other kinds of people, of women, of people of color. Sure, it’s hard to watch a white boy being forced to choke down a toilet-water-soaked banana, but it’s probably harder to watch a white boy learn — really learn — that he’s not the only one that matters. That no matter how hard he personally has it, nearly everyone everywhere at every time has had it harder.

Grade: C

]]>https://theblemish.com/2016/09/goat-baaaaaad-boys/feed/4212940‘Sausage Party:’ Salty Dogshttps://theblemish.com/2016/08/sausage-party-salty-dogs/
https://theblemish.com/2016/08/sausage-party-salty-dogs/#commentsFri, 26 Aug 2016 06:40:21 +0000http://theblemish.com/?p=212376For what should have been an innocent, filthy animated movie about anthropomorphic food items, Sausage Party has been the subject of some real controversy. Artists who worked on the film allegedly weren’t compensated fairly for overtime hours. There are a plethora of differing views about how progressive Salma Hayek’s queer Latina taco character, Teresa del […]]]>

For what should have been an innocent, filthy animated movie about anthropomorphic food items, Sausage Party has been the subject of some real controversy. Artists who worked on the film allegedly weren’t compensated fairly for overtime hours. There are a plethora of differing views about how progressive Salma Hayek’s queer Latina taco character, Teresa del Taco, actually is. And worst of all, my fiancé had to explain the joke in this “Mazel Tov!” billboard to my mother when we drove past it in the car one day.

So when I finally saw it, a week or two after most responsible, professional movie critics did (give me a break, my MOM was in town and we were BUSY schooling her on bris jokes!), I thought, This better be funny. And for the first five seconds (OK maybe a little longer than that), it was!

However grown up you think you are, it’s hilarious to see a jar of honey mustard with eyes scream, “FUUUUUUCK !” It just is. And then very quickly after that, when “cute food cursing” seemed to be the only joke structure holding up the movie, it got old. And then it got sort of funny again. And then it got maybe probably racist. And then it was funny for a second. And then it became this weirdly serious debate about religion. And then it got funny when Meatloaf the singer was Meatloaf the food. And then it got inappropriate again. And then it got shocking-funny when actual human heads started rolling. And then at the end, it boldly ventured into straight-up animated porn territory, and you kinda laughed because of how uncomfortable it was and because of how you almost took your MOM to see this but chose the new Woody Allen movie instead.

The journey that led to the wild food orgy started one morning with the opening of the grocery store. The food items on the shelves were so happy and full of song. They all wanted to get picked by humans and go to “The Great Beyond,” the mysterious land of peace and joy that they were all sure existed beyond those sliding glass doors. None of the food had any idea that humans diced them, ate them, murdered them in cold blood. It would be the job of Frank (Seth Rogen), the aptly named hot dog, to spread the word that the great food gods weren’t actually gods at all, that they’d all been fed lies to keep them complacent and ignorant.

Sausage Party has all the grown-up words you can imagine, but Seth Rogen and company didn’t take the easy road and write just a funny movie full of bad words, food puns, and funny voices. (Those are all present, but they don’t make up for the other stuff). The hard road they chose proved too bumpy for them to handle. The movie tries to tackle several hot-button racial issues and the very grown-up discussion of religion, faith and the existence of God, and they don’t do it well and the movie gets bogged down by all of it.

It’s an animated film about talking food with filthy mouths. It should have been consistently funny. It seemed like an easy task, but the writers leaned way too hard into serious stuff they weren’t equipped to handle.

Plus, the bris joke wasn’t even in the movie, so that billboard, which, again, my FIANCÉ had to explain to MY MOM, was wholly unnecessary.

Grade: B-

]]>https://theblemish.com/2016/08/sausage-party-salty-dogs/feed/1212376‘Suicide Squad:’ #SquadGoonshttps://theblemish.com/2016/08/suicide-squad-squadgoons/
https://theblemish.com/2016/08/suicide-squad-squadgoons/#respondTue, 09 Aug 2016 06:06:50 +0000http://theblemish.com/?p=212054By now, you’ve heard how bad it is. DC fans are ready to sue Rotten Tomatoes. The director of Suicide Squad wants to “Fuck Marvel.” Apparently, there’s some a conspiracy to destroy DC, a conspiracy that exists in a world in which a rivalry between comic book companies actually matters in the scheme of things. […]]]>

By now, you’ve heard how bad it is. DC fans are ready to sue Rotten Tomatoes. The director of Suicide Squad wants to “Fuck Marvel.” Apparently, there’s some a conspiracy to destroy DC, a conspiracy that exists in a world in which a rivalry between comic book companies actually matters in the scheme of things.

Listen, Suicide Squad is not a good movie. It is a bad one. But it’s not the slight to humanity that the internet made it out to be. (The internet blew something out of proportion?? No way.) Yes, the marketing team behind Suicide Squad made it look like some zit-faced teenage punk kid won a shopping spree at Hot Topic, but it wasn’t as visually cringey as I thought it would be. Some of the dialogue, plot (or lack thereof), music choices, character decisions (ahem Jared Leto), etc. etc, however… Those are the things that make it a bad movie.

Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) is a powerful badass lady with a terrible idea. In order to prevent the next big bad thing from happening — a thing, a villain, a threat that is never, not once named or explained — she wants to recruit “the worst of the worst.” She spends the first 20 minutes of the film making her case to Old White Government Man for her bonkers idea, facilitating unnecessarily long introductions of our anti-heroes: Deadshot (Will Smith), the most wanted hitman in the world and brooding daddy to a 10-year-old girl, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the world’s most psycho ex-psychiatrist and the Joker’s much more charismatic gf, Boomerang (Jai Courtney, who is trying so hard to be Tom Hardy and is decidedly not Tom Hardy), the Australian guy whose only thing is that his weapon is a boomerang, Diablo (Jay Hernandez), the gang member who can shoot flames out of his hands, Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), the quiet, scaly type, and June Moone, a.k.a. Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), an all-powerful witch who takes over the body of the demure archaeologist.

Once Enchantress brings Old White Government Man some top secret files he’s been after for years, the guy approves Waller’s little experiment with greedy glee, and it immediately goes to shit when Moone loses control of Enchantress. The ancient witch causes one of them mid-city lightning bolt power center thingies and starts recruiting innocent humans for her world-domination army. Woopsie. Then it becomes the job of the Suicide Squad, led by Moone’s angsty soldier-boyfriend, Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), to bring down Waller’s mistake.

I sat wide-eyed, watching the reckless American government make one decision that super backfired and destroyed its own people, and it was like watching what would happen if Donald Trump was in charge and got ahold of meta-human serial killers, or you know, nuke buttons. In that way, Suicide Squad was quite effective. Additionally, Will Smith has his moments. Margot Robbie squeezes what she can out of a poorly-conceived part, and if Viola Davis has a glass of red wine by her side and a desire to win at all costs, she is in her element. And she was.

In other ways, though, like the purely surface level at which we get to know our characters, the storylines that disappear without a trace, the unsympathetic, self-inflicted nature of the entire premise, and the lines like, “You’re saying we’re some kind of suicide squad,” the movie proves to be just not very good. While I admire the commitment the comic book visuals and the clear effort to make a distinctly DC movie, they missed the mark in too many ways with this one. Maybe next time.

]]>https://theblemish.com/2016/07/the-rest-of-the-web-thursday-7-7-16/feed/0211128‘Room’ is the Creepiest Movie of the Yearhttps://theblemish.com/2015/10/room-creepiest-movie-year/
https://theblemish.com/2015/10/room-creepiest-movie-year/#respondWed, 21 Oct 2015 06:03:59 +0000http://theblemish.com/?p=200261Ma (Brie Larson) and Jack (Jacob Tremblay) live together in a 10 x 10 room with a skylight. Ma has been there for seven years, Jack has been there his whole life. Making the best of a bad situation, the beginning of Room is sweet and fun. Ma and Jack exercise together, make up stories, watch TV, […]]]>

Ma (Brie Larson) and Jack (Jacob Tremblay) live together in a 10 x 10 room with a skylight. Ma has been there for seven years, Jack has been there his whole life. Making the best of a bad situation, the beginning of Room is sweet and fun. Ma and Jack exercise together, make up stories, watch TV, build an “egg snake”, read books… and every Sunday, Jack sleeps in the wardrobe to avoid seeing “Old Nick,” their captor, rape his mother.

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson, who also directed the wonderful Frank last year, and from a script by Emma Donoghue and based on her popular novel, Room is likely the scariest movie, and already in my top five, of this year.

Realizing that they’re running out of time, Ma tries to explain to Jack that there is a whole world outside their room and that she was lying when she told him TV was magic. This was such a great scene. Excuse my hyperbole but Jacob Tremblay is the greatest living actor.

What makes Room so unique is that their escape is just the beginning of the story. I always think about that when a movie ends – how do these people adjust to life after whatever scarring plot just happened to them. Here we get to see the weight Ma, whose name is Joy, carries after of seven years in captivity, and get to experience the world through the eyes of a boy whose only life experiences were inside the four walls of Room. Brie Larson is one of my favorite actors and keeps making movies like this, referring specifically to Short Term 12 which garnered some Oscar buzz for her. She does a tremendous job as usual, seeming completely effortless, natural and relatable even when her situation here is so beyond most people’s comprehension.

It’s so, so worth seeing.

]]>https://theblemish.com/2015/10/room-creepiest-movie-year/feed/0200261‘Bridge Of Spies:’ Something Smells Like Multiple Oscarshttps://theblemish.com/2015/10/bridge-spies-something-smells-like-multiple-oscars/
https://theblemish.com/2015/10/bridge-spies-something-smells-like-multiple-oscars/#respondSun, 18 Oct 2015 17:10:43 +0000http://theblemish.com/?p=200196Stop what you’re doing and go see Bridge of Spies right now. You think what you’re doing is important? It is nothing compared to this masterfully written, directed, acted, and constructed Cold War era spy flick. Bridge of Spies injects the notoriously cold spy thriller genre with humanity and humor. It twists and turns with moral ambiguity, […]]]>

Stop what you’re doing and go see Bridge of Spies right now. You think what you’re doing is important? It is nothing compared to this masterfully written, directed, acted, and constructed Cold War era spy flick. Bridge of Spies injects the notoriously cold spy thriller genre with humanity and humor. It twists and turns with moral ambiguity, but explores the lives of the people on each side of every twist and turn. This film is pure Hollywood gold; but in a Meryl Streep way, and not a Gwyneth Paltrow way.

Bridge of Spies features Tom Hanks as the smooth-talking New York Lawyer James Donovan, a charmer as compassionate and intelligent as he is cocky. Donovan gets sucked into the world of espionage after defending convicted Russian spy Rudolph Abel, played by Mark Rylance, in court. Both play their roles expertly, their characters forming an unlikely respect and friendship. The best part of the movie is when, while sharing a plate of spaghetti in Abel’s cell, their lips accidentally touch when they try to slurp down the same saucy noodle.

How embarrassing!

Ok, so maybe we don’t go full From Russia With Love up in here, but their repartee is really at the heart of this film. The juxtaposition of honest sweetness with ruthless cruelty anchors and underscores the incredible atrocities of man’s inhumanity to man, which are shown uncompromisingly in Bridge of Spies. In this morally grey world existing on the brink of nuclear annihilation, no character is trivialized, and every piece of the puzzle is treated with deft empathy.

If you hear spy thriller and immediately expect some kind of two hour long action sequence that ends with a city block exploding, chill. This ain’t a Bond film. Yeah, I guess it’s badass to shoot at stuff and not make facial expressions unless you’re grunting in pain, but Bridge of Spies celebrates a whole new kind of badassery. It takes guts to look a literal mouthpiece of the KGB in the face in East Berlin, and sniffle while you tell him that you are trying to speed up negotiations because you have a cold and want to go home.

Tom Hanks is cute when he’s being all sniffly. And detained in East Berlin. Presh.

Bridge of Spies is an incredible film, and how could it not be? It’s directed by Spielberg and the screenplay was written by Matt Charman and the Coen Brothers. It stars Tom Hanks. The minimal score adds gritty reality. The horror and beauty shown within this film, even in its little moments, are left naked and uncompromisingly pop. Bridge of Spies is masterfully crafted to be as emotionally resonant as it is devastatingly intelligent, and will probably (it goddamn better) win every award come award season.

Grade: A+

]]>https://theblemish.com/2015/10/bridge-spies-something-smells-like-multiple-oscars/feed/0200196‘Kingsman: The Secret Service:’ Firth Thing’s Firthhttps://theblemish.com/2015/02/kingsman-secret-service-firth-things-firth/
https://theblemish.com/2015/02/kingsman-secret-service-firth-things-firth/#commentsTue, 17 Feb 2015 15:00:49 +0000http://theblemish.com/?p=192686Kingsman: The Secret Service is exactly the movie you need right now. Trade in those reluctantly bought Fifty Shades tickets and take your book club to see Kingsman instead. Yes, it’s a British spy movie. Yes, it’s a comic book movie. But it’s also a slapstick comedy. And it’s full of actual, fleshed-out characters that […]]]>

Kingsman: The Secret Service is exactly the movie you need right now. Trade in those reluctantly bought Fifty Shades tickets and take your book club to see Kingsman instead. Yes, it’s a British spy movie. Yes, it’s a comic book movie. But it’s also a slapstick comedy. And it’s full of actual, fleshed-out characters that you care about enough that two hours and nine minutes doesn’t seem that long at all.

Colin Firth is a Kingsman, part of a secret, underground, super classy spy organization, run (obviously) by Michael Caine. When a mission goes wrong and they’re down a spy, each Kingsman is tasked with recruiting one young hopeful he believes has what it takes to be a suave, suited member of the elite organization. The recruits are put through harrowing training levels that include off-the-wall dangerous situations that are ridiculously unrealistic and breathtakingly suspenseful all at the same time. The trainees are systematically eliminated, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory style, for not following directions properly (or you know, getting “killed”).

Firth’s recruit is Eggsy (Taron Egerton), the son of a former Kingsman who sacrificed himself in the line of duty when Eggsy was just a little boy. Eggsy isn’t quite as posh as the other recruits. He’s got a mum and a baby sister who have perpetually tear-streaked faces due to a nasty, physically abusive step-father, and he lives in a small apartment with them. But, his time getting into trouble on the streets has made him a talented pickpocket and parkour artist. In short, he shows great potential for the badassery a Kingsman must produce on the reg.

While the recruits are being trained, we learn that famous billionaire, Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson, with a sideways cap and a lisp like no other) has a nasty plot up his sleeve that will wipe out a great deal of the world’s population under the tenuous justification of extremist environmentalism.

Jackson is great fun — his villainy is riotous and full of dirty money. Colin Firth is his usual, polite self, though here, he tends a bit more toward gory violence than say, his role in Bridget Jones’ Diary. Taron Egerton is a real standout — his charm isn’t manufactured. His immediate ease onscreen with the likes of Michael Caine, Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, and Mark Strong is extremely refreshing.

The action is comic bookish, occasionally overwhelmed by camerawork but ultimately paced well. The gore is so incredibly fun, as is the gadgetry and weaponry. Kingsman outwardly sends up the James Bond spy movie genre as well as the Trading Places/My Fair Lady switcheroo premise, but it’s less of a parody than an homage. It fits equally well in each of these genres while simultaneously calling out and celebrating their conventions (kind of like how The Princess Bride is both a successful romantic fantasy story and a successful parody of one). Maybe there were one or two lines that were a little eye-rollingly obvious as far as sticking it to the genre, but overall, it is a masterful balance —hilarious, gripping, and entertaining to the end.

Grade: A-

]]>https://theblemish.com/2015/02/kingsman-secret-service-firth-things-firth/feed/1192686‘Mortdecai:’ A New Deppthhttps://theblemish.com/2015/01/mortdecai-new-deppth/
https://theblemish.com/2015/01/mortdecai-new-deppth/#commentsMon, 26 Jan 2015 15:00:49 +0000http://theblemish.com/?p=192301By now, you’ve no doubt heard of the spectacular failure that is Mortdecai. It’s one of Johnny Depp’s biggest flops of all time, earning only $4.1 of the expected $10 million in its opening weekend. So it was with shameful, giddy schadenfreude that I purchased my ticket for this monstrosity, expecting the very worst. But […]]]>

By now, you’ve no doubt heard of the spectacular failure that is Mortdecai. It’s one of Johnny Depp’s biggest flops of all time, earning only $4.1 of the expected $10 million in its opening weekend. So it was with shameful, giddy schadenfreude that I purchased my ticket for this monstrosity, expecting the very worst. But I was disappointed. Mortdecai is not so horrendous I wanted to gauge my eyes out. Don’t misunderstand me — it is not good by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s not the appalling, flaming turd I was promised. It is an utterly ordinary failure.

Charlie Mortdecai is an art dealer of the snivelly, fishy, underground type, and he’s clumsy and inept in every way possible. He’s alive only because his manservant, the unusually sexually successful Jock (a way-too-committed Paul Bettany — who has cornered the mediocre art-mystery genre of the movie industry *ahem* The DaVinci Code) saves his ass over and over again. Along with his wife, Johanna (the absolutely insufferable Gwyneth Paltrow), and Detective Martland (Ewan McGregor), Mortdecai finds himself embroiled in a murder-art theft-conspiracy of epically overdone proportions.

The cartoonish character of Charlie Mortdecai is clearly a point of passion for Johnny Depp. He’s the anti hero of the book series, Don’t Point That Thing at Me by Kyril Bonfigioli. As a series of light novels, it’s probably passable for its tiny, dedicated audience (an audience that happens to include the likes of Stephen Fry). As a movie meant to start a franchise for the masses, it simply fails. This movie has been described as Depp’s attempt at his very own Austin Powers. First of all, the reason he would want one of those is lost on me. That sort of character was absolutely fantastic…in 1997. Secondly, the plot-heavy farce centering on the art world doesn’t quite have that “Marvel superhero saves the world” ring to it. It was never going to win over the general movie-going population. I could have told you that.

There are three jokes in the film, repeated incessantly and without creative evolution throughout. The first centers around the mustache Charlie Mortdecai decides to grow, which disgusts those around him, especially his wife. This is particularly perturbing because facial hair is one of, if not the most glorious aspect of human life. The second joke beaten to death concerns Jock the manservant’s ability to score some vag wherever they may be, whatever predicament in which they may be. The third is about Martland’s obsessive fancying of Mortdecai’s wife, which brings me to the Paltrow.

I am so over Gwyneth Paltrow it’s not even funny. The peculiarly perfect blank slate she provided for Margot Tenenbaum is no more! No more, I tell you. For one, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that Gwenyth Paltrow can do a British accent. Now, I may no longer be able to separate her performances in movies from the genuinely awful things she’s said about being a “working mother” and comparing receiving mean internet comments to living through war, but her presence on screen has become totally cringeworthy. I hope she gets stuck in her own GOOP. I’ll be over here, “consciously uncoupling” from all her movie roles.

In conclusion, it’s hard for me to jump on the internet bandwagon that’s so sensationalizing the failures of Mortdecai. It’s not special enough for that. It’s mediocre, just kind of boring and not very funny. But it’s no horrible thing we haven’t seen before. However, I do believe this is the time for everyone to realize exactly what Gwenyth Paltrow is. She, as a person, is exponentially more out of touch than Mortdecai.

Grade: C-

]]>https://theblemish.com/2015/01/mortdecai-new-deppth/feed/3192301‘John Wick:’ I’m Thinking Keanu’s Backhttps://theblemish.com/2014/11/john-wick-im-thinking-keanus-back/
https://theblemish.com/2014/11/john-wick-im-thinking-keanus-back/#respondTue, 04 Nov 2014 20:19:01 +0000http://theblemish.com/?p=189502Keanu Reeves is John Wick, a retired super-killer whose name evokes dread and the resignation to certain death if one gets on his bad side. He’s out of the business, having found love in a beautiful wife. And he enjoys life “on the other side” except for that his darling wife gets sick and dies, […]]]>

Keanu Reeves is John Wick, a retired super-killer whose name evokes dread and the resignation to certain death if one gets on his bad side. He’s out of the business, having found love in a beautiful wife. And he enjoys life “on the other side” except for that his darling wife gets sick and dies, as wives of tortured, violent ex-hitman are wont to do. What she does, after her death, is send him a puppy to cope, a baby beagle named Daisy who grants him immediate relief and purpose and awwwww.

But a mob of stupid, Russian gangsters show up at his house, beat John to a pulp and KILL THE DOG in order to steal his car. Killing a dog in a movie is a forbidden act, just the worst thing you can do…unless it’s followed by a swift 90 minutes of unrelenting, violent revenge. And that’s the beauty of John Wick. At the risk of perpetuating gender stereotypes, this is an action movie premise I can get behind one hundred percent. If someone killed the puppy my dead wife gave me, you better believe I’d chase them throughout New York City massacring anyone who stood in my path.

It’s a self-aware action flick — it’s funny, its heightened clichés mock itself (there’s an inspired scene with a cop, the versatile Tom Sadoski of The Newsroom), and the action is fucking awesome. John Wick is the best in the business, so he takes out guys like it’s his job (because it was once). There’s a method to his madness. He whacks dudes with a sense of rhythm; he is true killing machine. When approached by two men, he shoots and disables the first, turns and disables the second, turns back with a kill shot to the first, then finishes the job. He’s a consummate professional, but the action, while systematic, never gets boring. It’s relentless and brutal and totally great.

The filmmakers throw you into the underground, organized crime world, with minimal explanation, which is just the right amount. We’re not confused, but we’re not bombarded with exposition. The filmmakers know we are not there for the convoluted the logic. We’re there for the face-smashing.

On top of Keanu, who kills it with his signature stoicism and gravelly, moan-y delivery, there’s Willem Dafoe, Alfie Allen, Dean Winters, Adrianne Palicki, and Ian McShane. The top dog Russian villain, the father of the punk who stole Wick’s car (Allen), is Michael Nyqvist. Most of his lines engulf him. I came out of the movie wishing his part was played by Christoph Waltz. He had his moments, but most of his moments had him. Other than that, I would venture to say John Wick is a nearly flawless action movie.

And like, Keanu’s back now, so let’s hear it for Bill and Ted the third.

Grade: A-

]]>https://theblemish.com/2014/11/john-wick-im-thinking-keanus-back/feed/0189502‘The Best of Me:’ The 2nd Annual Nicholas Sparks Drinking Gamehttps://theblemish.com/2014/10/the-best-of-me-the-2nd-annual-nicholas-sparks-drinking-game/
https://theblemish.com/2014/10/the-best-of-me-the-2nd-annual-nicholas-sparks-drinking-game/#respondMon, 20 Oct 2014 22:31:38 +0000http://theblemish.com/?p=189306Those who’ve been with me on this movie review-writing venture from the beginning may remember a little review of a larger-than-life movie, Safe Haven, which was given to us about a year and a half ago. It’s really a bastion of Nicholas Sparksmanship, so much so that it inspired a great friend of mine to […]]]>

Those who’ve been with me on this movie review-writing venture from the beginning may remember a little review of a larger-than-life movie, Safe Haven, which was given to us about a year and a half ago. It’s really a bastion of Nicholas Sparksmanship, so much so that it inspired a great friend of mine to come up with the definitive rules for the Official Nicholas Sparks Drinking Game, and by golly, do they work. We reconvened for round two this year with the newest, hastily thrown together romantic drama to bear the Sparks name, The Best of Me.

We’ll take it rule by rule.

Drink when the two pretty white people meet.

The two pretty white people, in the case of The Best of Me, are the combined 1 ½ respectable actor, Michelle Monaghan and James Marsden (each of them are ¾ of a respectable actor, entirely due to their participation in this movie). Not only are they pretty and white, but they are also pretty white. I imagine that the only reason both of them agreed to do this is because they wanted an excuse to hug and kiss each other in the Louisiana bayou, shirtless, wet, and in otherwise super sexy circumstances. They’re good looking. I’d do it. Memorize a few lines, kiss James Marsden, get paid for it? Makes sense to me!

Also, you’re in luck, drinky drinkers, because they meet each other approximately A MILLION times in this movie, between flashbacks and not talking to each other, then finally talking to each other, etc., etc., etc. The premise is that Amanda (Monaghan) and Dawson (Marsden, also UGH on the name) were young and in love, but some serious shit went down and they haven’t seen each other for over twenty years. They reunite thanks to the death of their older, wiser mentor/father figure guy, Tuck (Gerald McRaney, better known to me as Raymond Tusk from House of Cards), whose final wish is that they come together, spread his ashes, go through his estate, and get to banging again.

Drink when obstacles come between their love

Well, what are they gonna do, NOT listen to a dead man? They fuck their way down memory lane, and we learn the truly awful, totally ridiculous conflicts they’ve had to bear. The obstacles that come between their love are aplenty, from children and a husband on Amanda’s side to a horrendous family history on Dawson’s side, including drug dealing, abusive relatives (though they never once say the word “drugs” in the movie) who hate Dawson so much for rejecting the family business that they cause a whole mess of violence.

Drink every time clothes are removed

There’s a garden at Tuck’s place. How is Dawson supposed to weed the garden, with his shirt ON? What is he, an animal?

Drink when a character announces he/she has some kind of disease

There’s leukemia! There’s a heart transplant! The Best of Me is a veritable petri dish of very serious ailments. By this point, you are mostly drunk.

Drink when someone dies

Well judging by the fact that they entire premise of the movie is based around reuniting after Tuck dies, you can bet your ass there’s a bunch of death. There’s even a funeral.

Drink when there’s a montage

The Best of Me holds no candle to Safe Haven’s FIVE montages. With a measly two, be glad there’s way more ridiculous shit to drink to.

Drink when someone says “We can’t be together” or some variation of that

The whole impetus for their break-up is that Dawson doesn’t think he’s good enough for Amanda and wants to protect her from his crazy, redneck family. He spends a whole lot of the movie reluctantly pushing her away. If she’d just listened to him the first time, the movie would be five minutes long, and you’d be way more sober.

Drink when the plot seems to be written specifically to cause obstacles even though in any normal world they wouldn’t be problems

If you actually adhere to this rule, you would have to drink from the very beginning to the very end, with no stopping to breathe. Realistically, there are reveals of death and disease, conveniently timed car accidents and shootings, and unnecessarily drunk and disorderly encounters to drink to.

Drink whenever you’re just like, “What? Why?”

This is a rule that you don’t take seriously if you don’t want to die. Every single thing is a “What? Why?” From Dawson’s Southern Gothic/Johnny Cash/Amish/Preacher father who looks to be maybe five years older than him to Amanda’s crying and looking at the stars, to crock-o-shit stories about fate and hearing songs and seeing visions that aren’t really there, you could drink yourself into oblivion with just this one rule. Take it easy.

Drink whenever someone cries

This includes your own tears of confusion.

Drink whenever there’s a kiss or embrace in any type of precipitation and/or while one or all parties are wet

In a pond, on a rooftop in a storm…you name something wet, Amanda and Dawson boogeyed down in it.

The Best of Me is a wildly successful drinking game subject, but not such a successful movie. The drama is particularly contrived, somehow it seems like the Nicholas Sparks crew is getting a little tired of themselves, and the prevailing consensus is that there aren’t nearly enough ghosts.